


Trust Exercises

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 18:23:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sam and Dean open a hunters' coffee bar, Sam throws out his back, and maybe there is some fixage.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trust Exercises

**Author's Note:**

> Gift for Colls for spn_j2_xmas. Assumes spoilers through 9.9.

Sam did a thing, back when, after the smoke had cleared from the whole Gadreel disaster, and then from the Abaddon aftermath. They’d both come out alive, him and Dean, alive and still standing. Well, sort of. He did a thing and he didn’t tell Dean and it wasn’t exactly important. Except it kind of was.

Cas had healed Dean, fixed the bloodied mess Sam had gotten back from Abaddon. But Dean hadn’t stayed fixed, not this time. Arthritis. It had settled in Dean’s hands, in the fingers Abaddon had broken, and that Cas couldn’t heal. Sam had wondered. Maybe it was just that angel healing’s not great for chronic stuff, but maybe not. Maybe this was Dean saying _no_ , holding onto something, some ugly pain of his own. Out of all the things Sam was judging Dean for at the time, that one wouldn’t make the list.

Anyway, that was when Sam had told Dean they were starting a hunters' bar. A hunters’ _espresso_ bar.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dean had asked.

See, this was why Sam wanted Dean around. Although he hadn’t, he really, really hadn’t. He’d wanted Dean gone, or himself gone. He’d wanted to be somewhere with seven walls, alone in seven walls (he’d read that somewhere, the seven walls thing), not in a bunker you share with your brother and a body you share with whatever angel your brother tricks into you. But, yes, anyway, that was why Sam had wanted Dean around, because Dean could still piss him off. Dean had pimped out Sam’s body and brain to an angel and he’d got Kevin killed (Sam’s hands were scorched when he dreamed about it, dreamed Kevin’s burnt out sockets), Dean had got Kevin killed, and Sam, honestly, at that point Sam had had nothing. No anger, no forgiveness. Even after Dean had gone off and let Abaddon take him and Sam had hauled him back, saved him for once, gotten Cas to heal him, sort of, Sam had had nothing. Didn’t seem like there was anything to say. Everyone who’s worn Sam borrowed bits of him, walked off with them absent-mindedly, like a pen in a pocket, and then lost them somewhere out there. Maybe that’s what had happened to anger and forgiveness, maybe they got dropped somewhere like some dried up Bic pen. Or maybe Sam was gone. No point in locking down now, the stable door was open and swinging and the horse was gone. Sam was a jumble of images, an empty stable, a lot of cold and cobwebs and shit, maybe some rusted tackle no one had a use for. Full of mixed metaphors and nothingness and a business plan. 

Anyway, yeah. Dean gets like this and it pisses Sam off and that was good. Sam could feel himself going stubborn, digging in his heels. It was alive and familiar and he couldn’t forgive, he couldn’t do angry, but he could do pissed off and for the moment he felt like Sam and like Sam wasn’t gone.

“Why not?” he’d said. “We have the money.” The Men of Letters had bank accounts, they’d had investments, things had appreciated nicely, and it’s not like there were any claimants but Sam and Dean. They could afford to start a small business. “And there’s no point just sitting on secret lore. We need, like, a distribution point.”

“I’ll tell you why not,” Dean had said, “two words: _espresso_ and _bar_. Hunters drink hard liquor from the bottle, Sam, not coffee from tiny cups. ”

“Call it a coffee shop,” Sam had said. He’d been planning to anyway; _espresso bar_ was just to annoy Dean. “And hunters run on caffeine, too. Did you ever think a few more people might survive their next Kooshdakhaa if they weren’t drunk off their ass when someone was giving them the lore?”

Dean had been hitting the bottle pretty heavily since Kevin, since his fingers had started hurting even after Cas healed them, swelling angry and clumsy, since he’d begun to realize, like Sam had, that if Dean’s hands didn’t work they couldn’t hunt. Bad enough that the Men of Letters, if you judged by the bunker, had been Men of Liquor. No way was Sam letting Dean help him start a bar. Even if Sam was gone, he wasn’t letting Dean start a bar.

“You ward off Kooshdakhaas with copper and piss,” Dean had argued, “you pretty much have to be drunk to believe that one, Sammy.” 

Which had been a good point and a concession. Dean’s always more willing to give way when he’s winning.

So they’d started a coffee shop. Not in Lebanon – too small, too close to home – but in Phillipsburgh. Smith and Wesson Coffee. They’d told Garth, and Jody, and let the word spread. Sam had talked Dean into retiring and it had hardly even been a thing.

But that, starting the coffee shop, that wasn’t the thing Sam had done.

The thing had been an impulse. A slow-moving impulse, an impulse spread out over months, those months when Sam had been buying a failed florist whose space would do, he’d thought, and hiring a contractor for the renovations, when he’d been reading catalogs of shiny Italian machines that made every coffee drink known to man, researching tea wholesalers, finding a local baker. When Dean had been down in the firing range, patiently crooking his crippled fingers around grips and triggers, or up in the library afterwards, drugging the pain with whisky.

Sam had gone out for a walk, out behind the bunker in the thin woods, and prayed to Castiel.

Cas hadn’t argued, when Sam had told him what he wanted. Sam had done his research, he’d had the diagrams. Nothing Cas had to do but do it. Sam had expected him to make trouble, maybe tell Dean. He’d thought Cas would ask him if he was sure, but he hadn’t asked. Sam had felt better, afterwards. It hurt a little, all the time, a background pain Sam suspected of being psychosomatic, his answer to Dean’s hands, but maybe it was the hurt that made him feel safe. Safer.

After that Sam had been able to go down and yell at Dean, to drag him away from the guns. After that it had been _don’t be ridiculous_ when Dean wanted to spar. There wasn’t going to be another time when Sam would find himself winning, knee jammed against Dean’s chest, twisting Dean’s crooked thumb back, seeing the tears in Dean’s eyes and the startled acceptance. That wouldn’t happen again.

**********

They’ve made it twelve years now. Sometimes Sam sleeps a few nights in the bare rooms over the coffee shop. He’s not in love with the commute the way Dean is, even though they can keep more reasonable hours the last couple of years, don’t need to be there opening to closing, since they’ve got a manager. (Vicky’s partner works in the morgue at the hospital, and Vicky says one is enough, just because she’s a kitsune doesn’t mean she wants to deal with corpses professionally, not now she doesn’t have to. That’s Anvita’s thing; she _liked_ med school. Vicky wants to be a barista, thank you very much, and deal with coffee, maybe cocoa, perhaps sometimes chai, just not glands in their native habitat. Dean laughed and hired her – she and Anvita don’t have a kid could get sick, Sam and Dean aren’t going to have to hunt down their assistant manager. The hunters who come to the shop don’t know, mostly, but Sam tells Jody, just so Vicky and Anvita will have another number they can call if things go pear-shaped.) 

Anyway. Sometimes Sam doesn't feel like a commute. And sometimes Sam’s fine with the commute and he still stays in town for a week or two. It happens every few months, the bunker shutting him in, locked down. The claustrophobia twists inwards, what if it’s him, what if it’s in him. He rubs at his chest and feels the steady, imagined pain of Castiel’s sigils and he lies awake in the in the room over the dark, empty shop with its faint gleam of chrome, and he tries to breathe. 

Dean never questions or argues when Sam says he’s staying, he just drives off. He’ll show up a bit early at the shop every morning till Sam comes home, a pumpkin muffin set aside from the warm boxes he’s picked up from their baker, and Sam can’t tell him to stop with the damn apologies. The warmth and impatience and solid numbness of still-not-OK is too ingrained, too much a part of their lives. 

Then Sam throws his back out putting the storm windows down.

This wouldn’t have happened in his twenties. Not even in his thirties. Now he’s past forty and his back twinges every step he takes, feels like it tears like paper when he stretches to get the Lapsang Souchong from the high shelf or bends down to get the soy milk (Dean doesn’t hold it against Tracy, the reserve that still shuts her down when Sam’s at the counter, but Dean can’t deal with her soy milk chais) from the fridge.

“Only you, Sam,” says Dean.

They’re back in the bunker. Vicky and Dean can run things the next few days, because Sam’s never moving again. He’d spent the drive back with his teeth clenched against the pain. He hadn’t wanted to stay in town. For some reason he’d wanted to be home.

“What do you mean, only me?” he says. Or mumbles, really, into the pillow on the couch. “I’m pretty sure some time in the course of human events some other person has thrown out their back with storm windows. Sheesh.”

“Pretty sure not,” says Dean. “I mean, we can look, if you like. All this lore. We can do some research. Men of Letters, after all, we’ve got records going right back to the dawn of storm windows. But I think you’ll find you’re the only moron managed to cripple his back with the things.” 

Dean’s not always good about acknowledging Sam’s greatest hits, the saving the world and ending it stuff. Those come with too high a price, and Sam’s excruciatingly aware how much Dean has paid (his soul, Kevin, Sam) trying not to pay up. Denial is nothing, Dean’s smallest coin. But he’s granting Sam this, this uniquely unremarkable achievement. You don’t get more normal than being the only moron who fucks up his back with storm windows. Dean’s proud, like he sometimes is. It warms Sam, Dean's carping approval. He turns to say something and his breath catches as his back protests.

“Hold on a sec,” says Dean. His footsteps go away, then return. A powerful medicinal stink washes over Sam. Then Dean’s hand is on his shirt. 

Sam must have tried to move, because his whole lower back has seized up with a slam of pain. Dean’s hand withdraws.

“Sam?” says Dean. “It’s Ben Gay, OK? Shit smells like superconcentrate of peppermint and old guy, but it works. I’m just going to put some on your back, OK? Tell me if it’s OK.”

Dean waits. Sam’s breathing carefully, not against the pain but the panic – Dean’s going to trick him, touch him, let something in – but there’s nothing coming at him from the warm shadow that’s Dean standing beside the couch, no pressure, just a patient presence. And, for Pete’s sake, Sam is not going to die from throwing out his back taking down a storm window. Dean’s not going to do something drastic.

“Go ahead,” says Sam, and his voice sounds totally normal. Dean flips up his shirt and then Dean’s hands are against his back, working stinky mentholated heat into the muscles with his crooked, painful fingers, deeper and deeper, till the warmth settles and Sam starts to relax around it. He imagines it working into Dean’s joints in turn, where they’re stiffened and flawed with pain. Like they’re bleeding into each other, but it’s OK. Nothing's collapsed. Everything's still standing.

“Thanks,” he says, when Dean finishes and pulls his shirt back down.

“No big deal,” says Dean. 

It’s not a big deal. But it kind of is. 

Sam’s still moving like geriatric molasses a week later. They’re into December. Dean and Vicky are coping OK, by Dean’s account, selling hot chocolate to the early Christmas shoppers. 

“This sucks,” Sam complains over Sunday lunch. “I was going to put up lights, this year, at the coffee shop. Everyone else has holiday lights. We were going to get with the festive program. And now I can’t because of my fucking back.”

Dean’s stuck a tree in the corner at the batcave some time in mid-December the last few years, he’s even dragged out a few of the more decorative and less cursed charms from storage and hung them on it. Also a simperingly sentimental plastic angel with a crude trench coat painted on, which Sam figures is not his problem, it’s between Dean and Cas. Last year Sam had made some strings of cranberries and popcorn – they’d done that in art when he was in third grade, they were supposed to take them home – and Dean had hung them on the tree. But they’ve never decorated the shop. 

“Where?” says Dean.

“Where what? Oh, the lights. I dunno,” says Sam. “The eaves, maybe? Maybe along the porch. Some inside, over the counter.”

Dean thunks the front legs of his chair down on the floor.

“For fuck’s sake, Sam,” he says, “you already did yourself in with storm windows. Just as well you’re not messing around with electric stuff on ladders. Getting yourself killed is not the festive spirit in my book.”

Dean’s pissing Sam off again. No, not pissing him off. Pushing him right over the void, like there's really a ladder teetering under him. 

“Trust me, Dean,” he says, “I’m not going to fall off some ladder and break my neck. Not with you around. I’d hate to see what bright idea you’d try this time, getting me back. But you can put the damn lights up yourself if you want. Not like it needs hands or anything.”

Then he stops, like he’d walked out on ice and heard it break. Too fucking late. It’s not like Dean’s never thrown Sam’s own apocalypse in his face. But he wouldn’t have made that last crack, about the hands. Dean wouldn’t have done that. Sam remembers Dean’s fingers, rubbing that gross liniment stuff on his back, careful of the knotted muscle, careful of their own pain. 

He looks down at his own hands. They’re gripping the table so tight that the knuckles are white. Then he looks up at Dean’s face.

“Sorry,” he says. “Dean. Fuck. I’m sorry.”

Dean shrugs, face carefully neutral.

“It’s OK, Sam,” he says. “No big deal.” He stands up, starts clearing the table. Sam just sits there. It was a big deal. Dean dumps the dishes in the sink, runs water over them, sits back down.

“Listen,” he says. “Listen, Sammy. I won’t do that again. Bring you back. I won’t. I wouldn’t do that to you. I wouldn’t risk what could happen. Maybe you don’t believe me, but, just. Be careful on ladders, OK?”

He’s looking at Sam like he can pull an answer out of him. Sam nods slowly. Dean’s right, Sam doesn’t believe him. But maybe he has to start trusting. Because Sam can sit around here forever, waiting for those Bic pens to turn up, waiting to get angry and forgive. Waiting for Sam to come back. But it’s not going to happen if Sam doesn’t take the first step. He’s got to trust something, Dean, himself, enough to start.

 

So Sam goes for a walk after lunch, out in the thin woods behind the bunker. He has to undo a thing. Walking isn’t much fun, with his back, but the back’s getting better. It only catches him now and then. He’s getting better. There’s snow on the ground, but it’s warmish. Sam can feel the sun on his face.

Castiel comes immediately, stands looking at Sam in inquiring silence.

“I want you to undo it,” Sam says. “Please. If you can, that is.”

Cas doesn’t have to ask what Sam’s talking about.

“I can,” says Cas. “The reversal wouldn’t be difficult, if you’re sure.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” says Sam. “It was stupid to begin with. Not like Dean’s going to stick another angel in me or something. Not again. I don’t need some, some induced allergy thing.” Though that’s not exactly how it works.

“You are certain,” says Cas. 

“For God’s sake, Cas,” says Sam, “you didn’t go to this much trouble to make sure I was sure when I was doing the thing that could kill me.”

“No,” Cas agrees. “I trusted that you were doing it because you had to. Or because you felt you had to. It wasn’t a vital difference at the time.”

The sigils shut down anything, any power, any being, that draws on Sam. No more parasites. If they do it by shutting down Sam (if the oxygen’s gone then the flames can’t feed, what does it matter if someone who’s stuck there can’t breathe, what does it matter, they’d only have died in the fire, and anyway the stable is empty, the horse has been stolen, Sam’s gone), if they have a hair trigger, first step across the threshold, that had been a price Sam was willing to pay. Eager to pay, even. Maybe he’d been hoping the alarm would be tripped. Maybe he’d been hoping Dean would be the one to trip it. _See what you made me do._ Sam had been a revenge junkie, after all, long before he first drank Ruby’s blood. 

Sam’s never been good at not betraying Dean. But he can trust him. Even when he doesn’t. That’s something Sam hadn’t known before.

“I don’t have to do it,” Sam says, “not any more.” 

If he electrocutes himself on the Christmas lights he’ll take his chance on Dean. He’ll trust Dean to let go.

Cas steps closer. “If you’re sure,” he says again, like a ritual, and puts his hand on Sam’s head without waiting for his answer. 

Sam imagines he can feel the sigils evaporate, though he probably can’t, the nagging, familiar pain snapping and floating off. Cas is gone before Sam can say thank you.

Sam heads back to the bunker. 

 

“I got you a Christmas present,” says Sam. “Sort of. Only I’m not going to tell you what it is, and it’s not something I give you.”

They’re sitting in the coffee shop. It’s Christmas Eve. They closed at two, right after lunch. Any hunting emergencies between now and the 27th can damn well call Garth. They’re drinking Dean’s hot chocolate, pausing before cleaning up and locking down. It’s snowing. 

“Sounds like a sucky deal to me,” says Dean. “Sure you don’t want to throw in a lump of coal with that?” 

Actually, Sam thinks, he will tell Dean. Maybe on New Year’s Eve. It’s not like it was such a big deal. Sam did a thing and a decade and change later he undid it. It wasn’t exactly important, except it was. Maybe Dean will be angry. Maybe Dean will forgive him. 

“I’ll get you something else,” Sam says for now. “Porn.”


End file.
